AUTONEWS

Meet the new green diesel

The denomination may seem strange, but in reality it says it all. The R33 BlueDiesel is actually a gas oil in which 33% is derived not from petroleum but from vegetable fat. The objective of creating this new fuel was to find a substitute for diesel, capable of being burned by conventional diesel engines, without any changes and without loss of yield. By ensuring, on the other hand, a considerable reduction of costs and, more importantly, of CO2 emissions.
If you like French fries, or any other type of food that is fried in vegetable oil, then you can already be considered a producer of fuel. This is because it is actually the frying oil that is associated with conventional gas oil and paraffin, also it is produced from used cooking oil. Of course, making the R33 BlueDiesel is much more complex than simply putting together old diesel and oil. The solution was initially developed by the Coburg University of Science in Germany, the Finnish biofuel specialists, and Volkswagen, which initially put a number of employees from Wolfsburg to test the R33 on their service cars, in a total of 280 vehicles.
Proof of the revenue, which consists of mixing 7% of fuel produced from used vegetable oil (and then filtered and processed), 26% paraffin generated from vegetable oil, also used, with the rest (67%) to be conventional gas oil, petroleum derivative. With the R33, not only does the engine power change, but the presence of 33% of vegetable fat derivatives leads to a reduction in particulate matter, NOx and, above all, a 20% cut in CO2 emissions.
At the end of the initial testing phase, the R33 BlueDiesel was delivered to Shell for larger scale production, which through Shell Global Solutions in cooperation with Tecosol and Neste will make available the R33 not only to power all Volkswagen pumps in Wolfsburg, as well as in other factories of the brand, such as Salgitter, as well as pumps installed in the facilities of other partners, such as Bosch.
The great advantage of R33 Bluediesel is that it is easy and inexpensive to produce, since industrialization can allow a 20% reduction in costs, compared to 100% diesel produced from crude oil. But its advantages do not compare with those promised by synthetic fuels, which can be carbon neutral, since they remove the carbon that already exists in the atmosphere to be produced, which carbon returns to the atmosphere once the fuel has been burned. But since it's still a few years before synthetic fuels see the light of day, it might even be good to use R33.